Mei received the award on June 16 at the second International Workshop on Sequential Methodologies (IWSM) in Troyes, France. The Abraham Wald Prize honors annually the best publication in the journal Sequential Analysis. Established in 2004, the prize bears the namesake of Abraham Wald, a Hungarian-born mathematician who founded the field of sequential analysis in response to the demand for efficient methods of industrial quality control during World War II.

"What this paper is about is to challenge the traditional thinking of how to evaluate procedures," said Professor Mei. "Normally in the field of sequential change-point detection, people use the criterion of 'average run length until false alarm' to evaluate procedures. In this paper, I try to challenge researchers to think about whether this is the appropriate way to do it."

Mei's current research interests include change-point problems, sequential methodologies, sensor networks, and their applications to engineering and biomedical sciences. Mei joined the Stewart School of ISyE in 2006 after performing postdoctorate research in biostatistics for two years at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics with a minor in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.